Stella and Worm have their own private patch of wasteland on which they stage mock battles with an army of Action Men. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in an African warzone, a young girl known as AK plays similar games, though in her case, the guns are for real.
Amanda Dalton's play for children age nine and above stakes out uncompromising territory somewhere between Lord of the Flies and Stig of the Dump. It is hard to be sure in which conflict and for which side AK (Alisha Bailey) is supposed to be fighting, but then, she doesn't know herself. The monologue she delivers about the men who razed her village, followed by more men who issued her with a rifle, is a disturbingly familiar tale from anywhere that places children on the front line.
Her story blends seamlessly with that of Stella (Niamh Quinn), who seems a bully at first, but whose aggression conceals anxiety about her brother, who is on a peace-keeping mission with the British army. Then there is the younger Worm (Matthew Abram), who has a fascination with powder monkeys – the term used for children who had to feed the cannons during naval battles.
Matt Peover's production poses more questions than it answers, but climaxes in a thrilling, hallucinatory vision in which the death of Nelson at Trafalgar and the destruction of AK's village seem to occur at the same time. Though aimed at family audiences, Dalton's play is a short, sharp shock that reminds us we are hardly exempt from the charge of using children as cannon fodder.
